The importance of cleanliness has long been recognized, particularly in the fields of heath-care, food preparation, and laboratories, to name but a few. The practice of surgical scrubbing by surgeons and other operating room personnel is probably the epitome of efforts to cleanse the hands and forearms of persons working in sterile environments. Although manual hand-washing can appear effective, medical experts have concluded that automated hand-washing increases hand-washing compliance and reduces the risk of infection.
Touchless automated hand-washing devices are designed to wash the hands of the user and provide the proper amount of antimicrobial solution in a set time. Additionally, these systems diminish the deterrent effects of friction and irritation associated with frequent manual hand-washing. Notwithstanding the benefits and convenience of automated washing devices, difficulties still exist with verifying employee or staff use of the washing apparatus. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a system that provides automated washing with a way of verifying usage by the intended users.
In addition to the foregoing, problems also exist with verifying that the proper soap solutions or disinfectants are being used in a cleaning station. In addition, problems exist with assessing whether a user has an allergy where the user should not use a certain type of soap or disinfectant provided in a cleaning station. In addition, problems exist in providing a solution in a cleaning station to avoid an allergy of a user. Also, problems exist in providing user specific formulations that address, for example, the user's specific job duties. In addition, problems exist in motivating users to stay at a cleaning station for its entire cleaning cycle. Also, problems exist in providing information to a manager or administrator regarding monitoring one or more cleaning stations, wherein the monitoring may include review of data directed to addressing one or more of the above noted problems.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,015,816, 6,727,818 and United Stated Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0132316 are directed to systems that in part address the problems outlined above. The summary of each document indicates that the disclosed systems are directed to monitoring or gathering information on locations of person, equipment, and/or activities associated with a facility. The gathered information is used to evaluate compliance with hygiene requirements as defined by a hygiene policy for a facility. These systems suffer from several drawbacks including facility (e.g. hospital) liability concerns introduced by the disclosed monitoring methods. These systems also make no allowance for people with no hand-washing requirements such as visitors to the facility. Additionally, these systems include a burdensome system of in/out zones, do not provide for automatic reporting, and do not include hand-washing requirements that are specific to a person's job title. Furthermore, these systems do not disclose a system for automatically providing hygiene compliance information to a regulatory body. These shortcomings are addressed by the various embodiments of the present invention.